The popular soup kitchen moved last fall after 34 years of operation in the old St. Patrick's School on Central Avenue because that property was sold.

The new Joyce Center officially opened on March 1, 2012, in the former St. George's Church at 369 Livingston Ave. A $400,000 renovation project to upgrade the building was completed last month. The building had been vacant for some time and was last occupied by the Black Catholic Apostolate, which moved to Menands, and the Rev. Peter Young's addiction treatment program.

"The transition has been good and the facility we have now is much more spacious and welcoming for the people we serve," said Shabana Masih, coordinator of the soup kitchen who began working at the previous location in 2008.

The soup kitchen serves a hot, nutritious noontime meal to about 240 people on Monday, Thursday and Sunday, Masih said. The clientele has shifted slightly as a result of the move.

"Some of the folks who came before can't travel that far to our new location," Masih said. "But we're picking up some new neighbors and lately we've been getting more kids from this neighborhood. Word is spreading that we're here."

In addition to dozens of volunteers from local Catholic churches and Temple Beth Emeth who prepare and serve the meals, Maria Scott-Barbieri led a group of gardeners who transformed a weedy, overgrown lot into a bountiful community garden on the property over the summer. They harvested fresh vegetables for the soup kitchen and shared the bounty with neighbors. The soup kitchen also receives food donations from area churches and a grant from the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, in addition to other support.

Rev. John Bradley, pastor at Blessed Sacrament parish and program coordinator of the Joyce Center, which also runs a food pantry at 315 Sheridan Ave. in the former St. Casimir's convent on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, said that fundraising and grants exceeded his expectations.

"I never dreamed we could pull it off," Bradley said. They surpassed the goal by $100,000 and ended up raising $500,000 for the Joyce Center. "An amazing array of people made it happen and I'm grateful to the community for their extraordinary support," Bradley said, noting Joyce's legendary persuasive skills. "We made it happen in her name because of her dedication to the poor and people in need."

It's been more than four years since the state Department of Environmental Conservation proposed banning a Ravena cement plant's use of coal fly ash, a source of toxic mercury pollution in the plant's smokestack emissions.

The proposal languished in the former administration of Gov. David Paterson, and shortly after Gov. Andrew Cuomo took office his new DEC commissioner, Joe Martens, vowed during a May 2011 Earth Day event that his agency would "carefully" examine the idea under a "broader context."

That language befuddled some people who wanted use of fly ash — a powdery residue of coal combustion in electric power plants — halted at the Lafarge North America cement plant. It is located on Route 9W, across from the Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk Junior-Senior High School.

So what has happened in the 18 months since Martens' statement? Well, seemingly little. Coal fly ash can be still be used at Lafarge. Asked for an update, DEC offered this statement; "Revisions to the state's solid waste regulations are scheduled for release for public review in the spring of 2013."

Opponents of continued coal fly ash use remain frustrated. "Commissioner Martens should be embarrassed for allowing an important ban on the use of such a hazardous waste to languish unattended all these years. Promises, promises," said Jim Travers, a member of Selkirk Coeymans Ravena Against Pollution who had asked Martens about the proposal at the 2011 Earth Day event. "We're told we should be patient. What more can we do but wait for DEC to begin to protect the health of our citizens from pollution? Four years and counting."

Last year, the state Health Department said mercury from the plant was not a threat to nearby residents because it was carried "great distances" away from the smokestack by winds.

Coal ash has been used in cement manufacture in the Ravena plant's high-temperature kiln since at least 1991, when it was owned by Blue Circle Cement. While fly ash was less than 2 percent of the kiln mixture, it caused more than 10 percent of mercury emissions on average, and in one test, caused nearly 20 percent, according to tests done at the plant in 2008 at DEC request.

Lafarge uses between 30,000 and 60,000 tons of ash a year, according to a prepared company statement in 2008. Ash came from the Danskammer plant in Newburgh, the Mount Tom plant in Holyoke, Mass., and the Hudson Generating Station in Jersey City, N.J.

Lafarge's new plant, planned to open by 2014, will no longer use the ash.